This application relates in general to software and more specifically to systems, methods, and user interfaces for facilitating the display and sorting of items in tables.
Methods for displaying data in database tables are employed in various applications including Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Project Management (PM), general Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications, and so on. Such applications often demand efficient mechanisms for navigating, searching for, displaying, and sorting data.
For the purposes of the present discussion, a database may be any organized collection of data, wherein data is organized via database objects (also called items), such as tables, records, rows, and so on. Data in a database may be grouped into various objects (e.g., tables) and sub-objects (e.g., rows and fields in a table), where the sub-objects are also called objects herein. An example database includes various data groupings in accordance with purposes associated with the different groupings. For example, in a database that tracks product sales, one table may contain records associated with “ship to” addresses; another table may contain “bill to” addresses; another table may include “sold to” addresses. In the example database, each table includes a primary record, representing a record associated with a highest priority. For example, in a table illustrating a set of “ship to” addresses, one of the shipping addresses may be considered the primary shipping address. The primary shipping address may be, for example, the shipping address that is most frequently used.
Each table in the example database may be sortable via one or more sort rules, also called sorting rules or sorting criteria. For example, records (e.g., fields, rows, or columns) in a given table may be sorted by alphabetical order. In this case, the applied sort rule is said to be an alphabetical sort rule.
Conventionally, to view and sort data from multiple tables associated with multiple different purposes (e.g., purpose groups) or categories, each table is opened and sorted separately. However, the opening of multiple tables and associated windows may be time consuming and may require excessive use of computing resources. Furthermore, sorting of the tables may cause the primary records to be sorted along with other records in the tables, thereby potentially making the primary records less visible within the tables. This may inhibit users from rapidly and efficiently arranging, viewing, and accessing desired data.